Skills

Not all ESCO skills can be accessed through the existing hierarchy.

The ESCO skills pillar distinguishes between i) skill/competence concepts and ii) knowledge concepts by indicating the skill type. There is however no distinction between skills and competences. Each of these concepts comes with one preferred term and any number of non-preferred terms and hidden terms in each of the ESCO languages. It also includes an explanation of the concept in the form of description, scope note and definition. The skills pillar of ESCO does not contain a full hierarchical structure but is structured in four different manners:

Through their relationship with occupations, i.e. by using occupational profiles as entry point;

In the part of the transversal knowledge, skills and competences through a skills hierarchy;

Through relationships indicating how knowledge, skills and competences are relevant to other knowledge, skills and competences (in particular in cases of skill contextualisation);

Through functional collections that allow to select subsets of the skills pillar.